An injured girl lies on the side of the road as she is attended to the day after an earthquakeÂ hit Port-au-Prince, Haiti, Wednesday, Jan. 13, 2010. A 7.0-magnitude earthquake hit Haiti on Tuesday. (AP Photo/Ricardo Arduengo)

PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti — The earthquake spared neither poor nor powerful: the president was homeless, the U.N. mission chief missing, the archbishop dead. Whole neighborhoods were flattened and perhaps tens of thousands of people killed in the latest catastrophe to befall impoverished Haiti.

The first cargo planes with food, water, medical supplies, shelter and sniffer dogs headed to the Western Hemisphere’s poorest nation a day after the magnitude-7.0 quake flattened much of the capital of 2 million people.

Hospitals, schools and the main prison collapsed in Tuesday’s quake. The capital’s Roman Catholic archbishop was killed in his office when the main cathedral fell. The head of the U.N. peacekeeping mission was missing in the ruins of the organization’s multistory headquarters.

At a triage center improvised in a hotel parking lot, people with cuts, broken bones and crushed ribs moaned under tent-like covers fashioned from bloody sheets.

“I can’t take it any more. My back hurts too much,” said Alex Georges, 28, who was still waiting for treatment a day after the school he was in collapsed and killed 11 classmates. A body lay a few feet away.

“This is much worse than a hurricane,” said doctors’ assistant Jimitre Coquillon. “There’s no water. There’s nothing. Thirsty people are going to die.”

Bodies were everywhere in Port-au-Prince: those of tiny children adjacent to schools, women in the rubble-strewn streets with stunned expressions frozen on their faces, men hidden beneath plastic tarps and cotton sheets.

Haiti’s leaders struggled to comprehend the extent of the catastrophe — the worst earthquake to hit the country in 200 years — even as aftershocks still reverberated.

“It’s incredible,” Preval told CNN. “A lot of houses destroyed, hospitals, schools, personal homes. A lot of people in the street dead. … I’m still looking to understand the magnitude of the event and how to manage.”

Preval said thousands of people probably were killed. Leading Sen. Youri Latortue told the Associated Press that 500,000 could be dead, but conceded that nobody really knows.

“Let’s say that it’s too early to give a number,” Preval said.

He said that both his palace and home were uninhabitable and he didn’t know where he would spend the night.

In Petionville, next to the capital, people used sledgehammers and their bare hands to dig through a collapsed commercial center, tossing aside mattresses and office supplies.

Nearby, about 200 survivors, including many children, huddled in a theater parking lot using sheets to rig makeshift tents and shield themselves from the sun.

Looting began almost as quickly as the quake struck at 4:53 p.m. Tuesday, and people were seen carrying food from collapsed buildings. Many lugged what they could salvage and stacked it around them as they slept in streets and parks.

People streamed into the Haitian countryside, where wooden and cinderblock shacks showed little sign of damage. Many balanced suitcases and other belongings on their heads. Ambulances and U.N. trucks raced in the opposite direction, toward Port-au-Prince.

About 3,000 police and international peacekeepers cleared debris, directed traffic and maintained security in the capital. But law enforcement was stretched thin even before the quake and would be ill-equipped to deal with major unrest.

An American aid worker was trapped for about 10 hours under the rubble of her mission house before she was rescued by her husband, who told CBS’ “Early Show” that he drove 100 miles to Port-au-Prince to find her. Frank Thorp said he dug for more than an hour to free his wife, Jillian, and a co-worker from under about a foot of concrete.

The international Red Cross said a third of the country’s 9 million people may need emergency aid, a burden that would test any nation and a crushing catastrophe for impoverished Haiti.

Port-au-Prince’s ruined buildings fell on the poor and the prominent: The body of Archbishop Joseph Serge Miot, 63, was found in the ruins of his office, according to the Rev. Pierre Le Beller at Miot’s order, the St. Jacques Missionary Center in Landivisiau, France.

Senate President Kelly Bastien was among those trapped alive Tuesday inside the Parliament building, but a day later had stopped responding to rescuers’ cries, Latortue said.

Even the main prison in the capital fell down “and there are reports of escaped inmates,” U.N. humanitarian spokeswoman Elisabeth Byrs said in Geneva.

Haiti’s quake refugees likely will face an increased risk of dengue fever, malaria and measles — problems that plagued the impoverished country before, said Kimberley Shoaf, associate director of the UCLA Center for Public Health and Disasters.

Some of the biggest immediate health threats include respiratory disease from inhaling dust from collapsed buildings and diarrhea from drinking contaminated water.

Shoaf said swamped clinics may not be able to give people help they need for broken bones and other injuries, leading to complications.

The U.N.’s 9,000-member peacekeeping force sent patrols across the capital’s streets while securing the airport, port and main buildings — but also struggled to rescue colleagues from their collapsed headquarters.

U.N. mission head Hedi Annabi, of Tunisia, was among about 150 people missing, mostly at the headquarters building, said peacekeeping chief Alain Le Roy.

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